A time travelling thriller with an unusual premise. Fans of Michael Crichton will enjoy this novel but I did not enjoy it and failed to finish.

Lost In Time is a twisty time-travel whodunnit-murder-mystery rescue-adventure story. And if that wasn’t enough, there are also dinosaurs thrown in for good measure! So much is going on in this book, you could easily feel lost, but the magic of this story is that, somehow, it all comes together — disparate things which shouldn’t work feel like they belong with one another. So instead of scratching your head, you’ll be biting your nails and pumping your fist. And the fact it manages to pull off all these things is truly impressive.

If you’re a fan of stories like Here And Now And Then by Mike Chen, or any Michael Crichton sci-fi thriller, then you’ll love Lost In Time. It’s got a similar vibe, where all the sci-fi trappings are less important than the characters, and what’s going on between them is where the real intrigue of the story lies. The pace is gripping, and the scientific flourishes are intoxicating. But a strong focus on character doesn’t mean that the plot suffers. The plot of this book is so intricately woven, it’s an absolute triumph. What lands hardest is the father/daughter relationship. Because at the end of the day, this is a book about family.

The characters are easy to root for. Sam is a scientist widower who’s trying to move on from his grief. Adeline is a daughter who can’t accept her father’s decisions. The struggles of each character feel organic and there’s a naturalness about their relationship that endears you to them immediately. So when they become the obvious suspects in a locked-room mystery, and Sam admits to a murder he didn’t commit in order to save Adeline, you feel the strain between them. You sense their desperation as they’re separated by millions of years and a whole other dimension, and you really crave for them to be reunited.

The reason they’re separated by entire universes is due to the Absalom machine — something which Sam helped to build. It sends prisoners back in time, and plonks them in a parallel dimension to fend for themselves. Crime is virtually eliminated because, let’s face it, is any crime really worth being expelled from our universe to fend against dinosaurs for? Convicted of murder, Sam is sent back to the Triassic period, and it’s up to Adeline to figure out the impossible — find a way to save her father.

In terms of action, there isn’t as much as I was expecting. Do I wish there was more dinosaur action? Sure. But that’s not really the focus of the book. And the twists that unfold as Adeline tries to come up with a way to save her Dad are some of the best I’ve seen in a long time. It’s a masterclass of misdirection. I absolutely loved the places where this story went. There’s one rug-pull moment in particularly that is so delicious, it should get a Michelin star. So it might not meet your dinosaur-on-dinosaur expectations, but it wildly exceeds anything you can imagine in terms of twisting loops and surprising reveals, and the solution to the mystery of the book is just sublime. If you look at this book as a puzzle, then the way the pieces fit together are a thing of beauty, and it’s very, very satisfying to solve.

The chapters are short, and the switches between perspectives allow for some nice comparisons as both Sam and Adeline learn about themselves as much as what’s really going on. This makes it a real page-turner. It’s a compulsive and compelling read.

Come for the dinosaurs. Stay for the tender reflections on what it means to be a father and a daughter. Lost in Time is an unexpected delight. It’s a brilliant concept, and fans of time-twisting stories are sure to love it. Now, all I need is an Absalom machine so I can go back and read it all over again.

This book started off so well, but then about halfway through fell off for me. The beginning, the first half, was so much fun! So Sam and some friends started this company years ago not expecting to actually create anything. Only they do and now their machine, Absolom, is used to send prisoners to the past. To the time of dinosaurs more or less. The really bad ones like killers and stuff.

Now in the present someone is setting Sam up for murder and to help save his daughter he gets sent back in time. Now this part of the story was so much fun! I loved Sam in the past, I loved Adeline trying to figure out what was going on and who set up her father, all of it. Yes, it was kind of silly don't take it too seriously fun.

Then about halfway through the story changes. No more fun adventures. Instead we are going to focus on how everything came to be. How the company was started, how everyone got to where they are in the present and...it wasn't horrible, but after that first part I was disappointed. I didn't really care and would have loved more past and present storylines. So the first part I loved, and then it was just kind of meh by the end. And that ending was odd. Like I told my husband what happened and he was just like why? Why are the characters doing that?? And I honestly don't know. It was such a weird way to end the story at least to me.

Thanks to NetGalley, the author and the publisher for a copy of this book

perfected a form of 21st century techno-thriller – following in the footsteps of Michael Crichton – where a strand of scientific speculation provides a launch pad for a fast-paced adventure into the unknown. This approach typically takes Riddle into apocalyptic, disaster movie territory via plague, pandemic, alien invasion, cosmic catastrophe and so forth, but Lost In Time is a little different…

This is an altogether more intimate story, woven around a young woman who loses her parents in initially tragic and then mind-bending, bizarre circumstances. There’s a murder mystery to solve, an inventive form of interdimensional travel which relies on quantum entanglement, and a solid slice of personal redemption.

Riddle’s style is to write short, snappy chapters which accelerate you through the story. He’s a master illusionist who keeps us readers fixated on the flashy action in the foreground while the plot gradually tightens in the subtext. As the title suggests, this is one of those time travel tales with plenty of potential for perplexing paradoxes, and I have to applaud his dexterity in resolving a metric tonne of continuity conundrums – without resorting to tedious chapters of exposition. I’m a sucker for any sci-fi which takes us back to reinterpret events from multiple viewpoints, so I hugely enjoyed those moments.

Some of the action sequences dragged for me, however; can’t say I was too engaged with the guys running around in the Triassic, dodging dinosaurs, earth tremors and scorching lava. But hey, this is AG Riddle so there has to be an extinction event going on somewhere.


If this sounds like the plot of a Roland Emmerich movie – well, that’s because it reads a lot like pitch for a Roland Emmerich movie. You’d be forgiven for wondering when Godzilla was going to put in an appearance. In the same vein, the characters are what we might kindly call ‘lightly sketched’ with one or two identifiable traits so you can tell them apart (and predict what their story arc will involve). But there’s not a lot of in-depth complexity to the chaps from central casting.

So I didn’t really connect with the feisty female protagonist – but that didn’t stop me yomping through the pages in the same way I’d happily eat a whole tube of Pringles without pausing to taste the flavour.

Easy to read, frothy, speculative fiction. No, it’s not serious and yes it does get a bit sentimental. But it was a refreshing change to read something with an upbeat, positive outlook – and I suspect I’ll return to this author next time I’m in the mood for something reassuringly frivolous. Just don’t over-think it.
6/10

I finished Lost in Time and within 5 minutes had ordered the beautiful Goldsboro limited edition with gorgeous colorful sprayed edges because this was a book that needed to be showcased on my bookshelves.

I read a lot of twisty time travel sci-fi but nothing prepared me for the brilliant twists of Lost in Time. This will be in my top 3 books of 2022 for sure!

In addition to being a novel about time travel, it’s also a sci-fi thriller, a suspense, and a murder mystery. If you are a fan of Crichton, you should enjoy this one.

Murderers are no longer sent to prison. They are sent back in time. 200 million years back to the time of the dinosaurs.

In Lost in Time, one of the inventors of the time travel machine confesses to the murder of the woman he loves, another of the six inventors, and is sent to the Triassic era of time where he has been exiled. In the meantime, his daughter is doing everything she can to get him back.

This was just so good and the big twist had me gasping in surprise. I’ll be checking out Riddle’s prior work of books for sure.

*Thanks so much to Head of Zeus Books and NetGalley for the advance eGalley!*

This was really hard for me to finish because the entire premise was faulty in my opinion. And because I couldn’t believe that, I just couldn’t believe in the rest of the book. The idea that a machine could send prisoners back into prehistoric times wasn’t the problem - for me it was just the question: ‘why?’
If people are terrible criminals and they get caught, they are imprisoned or executed. People either agree or disagree with that in much the same way as they would agree or disagree with sending people back into the Triassic era! I just couldn’t see why any government would agree or why it would wipe out crime, as the premise would have us believe. If the threat of being executed bor imprisoned doesn’t stop people from murdering other people then why would the threat of being sent into the past?

It was far too long and both overly complicated and overly simplified. Not for me!

Fans of Blake Crouch might enjoy this sci-fi page turner. It has nice short chapters and a quick story about time travel. The writing is a bit simplistic and the characters are a bit one dimensional , I wish there was more of Sam's story to add more adventure.

I enjoyed this story with its techy, time travel, and mystery blend. The story has a slow start but it was like a B-rated movie, once I got past the plastic characters and committed to the story, it was pretty good. The events and how they play out is really clever.

ARC was provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Pub Date: Sep 1, 2022

I received an ARC in exchange for an honest review. Another fantastic notch under Titan Book's belt!! This fantastic novel by AG Riddle is no exception to the amazing cannon they host. Filled with intrigue and just the right lighthearted dialogue that keeps you wanting more. The amazing story told (I wont spoil anything) kept me captivated from start to finish! A crowning achievement for Riddle I think!

would 1000% recommend!

Lost in Time is a fantastic utopian science fiction novel for anyone who loves time travel and Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park. Totally unputdownable and I loved the way the story unravelled and the many ethical and moral considerations of time travel.
With thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I’ve been a sucker for sci-fi time travel stories, the good, bad, and ugly for over 30 years. Lost in Time goes in the good category. It doesn’t get too bogged down in the science of possibility although quantum entanglement and paradoxes are major parts of the plot.

This is really a book about relationships. They are complex and so add the element of time to them and it complicates them even more. There are so many characters with a motive for murder that it takes a while to get through the weeds to make sense of what might’ve happened. There were definitely twists and they make a lot more sense after you finish the book. I really enjoyed this one.

Thanks to NetGalley and Head of Zeus for an ARC of this book.

Lost in Time was a very interesting book! I ended up enjoying it but I don't know if it will be for everyone. I think teenager me would have loved this. There were some good twists, I did feel like it could have been shorter and I was a bit sad we didn't get to spend more time with the dinos. Overall I think the concepts were great but the execution was a bit choppy and weird.

Thank you NetGalley and Head of Zeus for the ARC.

Thank you to Netgalley, the publisher and the author, for an ARC of this book, in exchange for an honest review.
The premise of the book drew me in but once I started reading it, I just couldn’t get into it at all.
I wish the author, publisher and all those promoting the book much success and connections with the right readers.

This is the sort of book that keeps you up at night. I enjoyed reading it so much that when I eventually turned off the light it was hours after my usual bedtime. The basic theme is time travel, but this book shows that the stories that can be spun out of that theme are almost without limit. One of the main threads of the story is an unexplained murder and so we have a "who done it " with temporal knobs on it. Since the story follows rules which avoid breaching causality, like all good science fiction this tale is believable. Another of the themes is personal loss and redemption which give the characters depth and engage the readers sympathy. But the best thing about it is that it is a most enjoyable read. I shall be waiting with impatience for A.G. Riddle's next book.

Interesting Concepts Yet Disjointed Storytelling. This is one of those books where there is nothing objectively wrong with it, and yet it also feels a bit disjointed. Separated into several parts, it could likely have been better separated into a trilogy, with the events of Parts 1 and 2 in one book, 3 and 4 in a second book, and 5 in a final book. Then you could expand each section out beyond what was presented in even these 400 pages (since you'd arguably need at least another couple hundred or so for a third book) and really make the effort to take a good tale into the stratosphere of being among the best in scifi. Overall the specific application of time travel here was one I hadn't seen in any form since the early 2000s era Jet Li movie The One, and even here the specific direction Riddle applies is unique in my experience and intriguing overall. Ultimately this is a good tale and well told, it just seemed like it could have been better with a different editing approach. Very much recommended.

DNF. Another book where o wonder what I am missing. Everything should have appealed - murder, science and time travel. Yet every element seemed clunky and hollow and I just didn’t really believe in the characters or the story. Not if it seemed remotely credible

It's been a while since I read a science fiction book and it's been a pleasure to read this one. Science fiction can take you anywhere and break rules. The job of the author is to make the incredible, credible and A G Riddle does that well with this book although I did struggle with some of the more technical stuff. You will NOT see the ending. And I know I'll still be thinking about this story for a while to come.

Overall, a good read and an incredible story made, er, credible.

I don't quite know what to say about this book other than I absolutely loved every second.

Fascinating science, murder mystery, dinosaurs, time travel.

This book had me gripped from the very first chapter and I was racing through it, trying to wrap my mind around all the twists. All of which I never saw coming - it was shocking and absolutely insanely genius.

In a book worthy of Michael Crichton’s legacy, A.G. Riddle delivers a non-put-downable, twisty, stay-up-late reading scientific thriller of parallel universes and quantum entanglement theory that upends your very sense of the flow of time.

A group of five scientists, originally connected via Stanford, get venture funding to try to develop a transportation device that could instantaneously move items around the globe using quantum entanglement theory. Turns out all the scientists have both deeply guarded secrets as well as financial distress that leads them to take the venture funding. They also have no idea if the idea is feasible until an accidental discovery enables them to create a time-travel device, Absolom, that can move mass into parallel universes. Trying to fund their company, the best use they come up with is for the exile of dangerous criminals and terrorists to the pre-historic past, with governments paying licensing fees to use the technology. Out of fear of Absolom, crime on Earth goes away.

Which is all fine until one of the scientists, Sam, is wrongly accused of murdering his colleague and lover Nora. From there everything in the Absolum world starts to unravel, and you find yourself immersed a scary murder mystery with time travel, dinosaur battling, and spying. Each character proves so compelling that you get swept up in their individual life stories as well as their intense team dynamics.

Best of all, the intensity of the plot has you quickly suspending disbelief and simply immersing yourself in where this thrilling ride will take you and who indeed is the murderer of Nora. Clear your time for this one, as you’ll not be able to stop reading. Next up- I’m completely inspired to read some of A.G. Riddle’s other novels!

Thanks to Head of Zeus, AdAstra and NetGalley for an advanced reader’s copy.

Wow! What else can I say? I couldn't put this book down. Some of the explanations made my head spin but the story is amazing with one twist after another. I loved the parts set in the Triassic period where Sam's survival skills are tested to the limit, also the characters are so well developed with some incredibly touching moments. My advice is to avoid spoilers and just go with the flow, it's more than worth it.